Bribery in higher education in former Soviet countries: A systematic review

• In Event: Power and culture: studying the frontiers of educational change and cultural reproduction

Proposal

Corruption, such as bribery, exists in varying degrees in many countries around the globe. In some of them, it has become systemic due to a large proportion of the population engaging in it and accepting it as the normal way of solving daily issues. In some countries (e.g., Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ukraine), it is widely perceived by the general public as one of the biggest problems in education.
This research examines the existing scholarly literature on bribery, the most visible type of corruption, in the former Soviet Socialist Republics’ higher education space, focusing on social and economic reasons and common manifestations, and illuminating possible solutions that may curb the phenomenon. Those republics are also called “post-Soviet countries” referring to the states that regained their independence with the demolition of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). These countries were Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan (Edele, 2018), which currently take up a large part of Eurasia. Most of these countries are mentioned frequently in the existing literature pertaining to higher education corruption.
Methodologically, this qualitative study employs systematic literature review (Gough et al., 2012; Gupta et al., 2018; Okoli, 2015) as the main method of data collection. A systematic literature review is defined as a well-organized and high-quality summary of the existing literature with the purpose of answering specific research questions (Gupta et al., 2018). In other words, I did not collect any novel primary data and, instead, relied on secondary data from 19 scholarly papers for my study. These empirical studies were focused on the issue of higher education bribery in post-Soviet countries and published from 2007 onwards.
For the theoretical framework of this research, I made use of the collective action theory by Mancur Olson (1995). The original version of the collective action theory (Olson, 1965) draws upon the notion of employees working towards a common goal in organizational settings and suggests that employees contribute more to the shared work if they are expecting more individual benefits than societal ones as a result of their efforts. This way, a collective action by the members of a community leads to more productive results as each member fulfils their share of the aspiration task as part of their responsibility. According to some later interpretations of the theory (e.g., Marquette & Peiffer, 2015; Rothstein, 2018; Zapata, 2018), corruption becomes systemic when the number of people who are involved in it increases in a certain community. In so doing, it becomes a collective problem for authorities and/or citizens and requires a collective action in order to be reduced.
This research is of significance due to several reasons. Firstly, there is a shortage of literature on the topic of corruption in higher education (Sabic-El-Rayess & Mansur, 2016). As a result, by collecting and synthesizing the extant literature on the topic, not only does this study systematically present the previous findings; it also, hopefully, gives the future researchers a solid foundation of literature. The topic is also significant since educational institutions are the places that one attends to learn many important things for their future; they shape students’ values and beliefs. Thus, instead of growing honest, responsible, and professional adults, institutions that are hubs of corruption, in turn, often ‘produce’ corrupt individuals who are likely to simply continue such behaviors in their later lives (Rumyantseva, 2005). Due to the fact that educated citizens play a vital part in the process of advancing their country, many of these countries (e.g., Armenia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan) (World Population Review, 2022) cannot develop as fast as they desire. Another major negative result of academic corruption is the fact that it potentially increases inequalities regarding students’ access to higher education by allowing money and power to buy this access rather than their learning potential, dedication to their studies, and talent; hence the bigger social inequities (Osipian, 2009). It may also contribute to making the students believe that they do not have to study to be successful because they will always have an easy way of buying success (Nabaho & Turyasingura, 2019). All these features suggest that corruption in higher education is detrimental to equality and equity of education in any society; hence the strong relevance of this research to the CIES 2023.
The findings in this study revealed multiple ways in which bribery can manifest itself in higher education in the eight post-Soviet countries on which I located literature. These included students sending the amount to the professor through mail, via an intermediary, or, in rare cases, giving it directly to them (Zaloznaya, 2012; Zaloznaya, 2017a). While these practices were found to be prevalent only during university education in some of these countries (e.g., Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan) (Jenish, 2012; Krawchenko, 2021; Sadigov, 2015), in others it was also common in the admission process (e.g., Armenia, Russia, Ukraine, and Tajikistan) (Denisova-Schmidt et al., 2016; Hovannisyan, 2021; Osipian, 2008; Shaw et al., 2015; Whitsel, 2011).
The findings supported the common belief that when professors accept, or extort, bribes from their students, they do so mainly due to the low income that they receive in higher education (Avagyan, 2012; Ergun & Sayfutdinova, 2021; Osipian, 2008; Shevchenko & Gavrilov, 2007; Valentino, 2007; Whitsel, 2007). Thus, it was suggested that salary increments for professors might help reduce the higher education bribery (Avagyan, 2012; Shevchenko & Gavrilov, 2007). Yet, there are other motivations behind students’ bribing that this study revealed, such as avoiding difficulty and boredom and the desire to simply receive a degree rather than quality education (Denisova-Schmidt et al., 2019; Sadigov, 2014; Shaw et al., 2015; Zaloznaya, 2017a). The findings supported what the collective action theory suggests (Marquette & Peiffer, 2015; Olson, 2015; Rothstein, 2018; Zapata, 2018), showing that change cannot simply happen if the population are not willing to collaborate in not bribing/taking bribes.

Author

• Roya Karimli, Western University, Faculty of Education